Toxic mortgage-backed security assets led to the collapse of the US housing market and a global recession...

Could reckless spending led by EPL teams and an over inflated transfer market lead to a "football recession"?

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

Then look over at Roma where Paloschi is in the process of building a modern day amphitheater, estimated to be the most visited entertainment center in southern europe as part of Roma 2.0.

Appoints Monchi as football director who in turn has appointed Sassaulo coach Di Francesco as new manager; one of several bright lights in serie A last season.

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

To what end though? These players have been identified by other clubs too - none of these players are Dortmund youth products.

They haven't looked close to challenging Bayern for several years now.

Precisely!

It's about the here and now, cus its now or never!

And if its not now, it is burst!

The result?

Too few are willing to lay the foundations.

How many realize that Madrid's success in the last two years is not all about Ronaldo, but also the investment in young players who make up a terrific bench. Asencio, Morata, Carvajal...

And now they are adding further to it: Vallejo, Theo, Vicinius...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

^Are they merely laying foundations on a level field, or are they bulldozing the new build miniature villages of lesser architects to make way for their mansion? Southampton could boast Bale, Walcott, Oxlade under the stewardship of Pochentino, but socialist sentiment is muffled and molested in this savage Serengeti. Kill or be killed.

Question, had United's class of 98 been West Ham's, would the Hammers have been an eminent force or would Scholes and Beckham have followed Lampard, Cole, Ferdinand et al?

In recent times City have acquired Gabriel Jesus, Sterling, Leroy Sane, the future looks bright and at the same time, is another's not dampened by loss of the departed? Tribunals set a fee for the cherries picked before ripening, is that enough? Should there be a period of youth service upon ascension to the first team squad? Pickford goes for 20 odd, which serves Sunderland well, but how well dies it serve them as far as planning forthe future be concerned?

^Are they merely laying foundations on a level field, or are they bulldozing the new build miniature villages of lesser architects to make way for their mansion? Southampton could boast Bale, Walcott, Oxlade under the stewardship of Pochentino, but socialist sentiment is muffled and molested in this savage Serengeti. Kill or be killed.

Question, had United's class of 98 been West Ham's, would the Hammers have been an eminent force or would Scholes and Beckham have followed Lampard, Cole, Ferdinand et al?

In recent times City have acquired Gabriel Jesus, Sterling, Leroy Sane, the future looks bright and at the same time, is another's not dampened by loss of the departed? Tribunals set a fee for the cherries picked before ripening, is that enough? Should there be a period of youth service upon ascension to the first team squad? Pickford goes for 20 odd, which serves Sunderland well, but how well dies it serve them as far as planning forthe future be concerned?

The guarantee lies in the clarity and consistency of the vision. Focus on the traffic, in and out of the door misses the point.

How? Why?

I offer Sevilla under Monchi...

Added to the clarity of vision is of course the scouting network. Once those are in place, other things fall in place.

And speaking of Sunderland, did they not spend more than Atleti last season?

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

@Tx, casuistry at its cunningly evasive best. The question remains unanswered. How can one plan for the future when that future is preyed upon by the leviathans of the ocean deep? How can West Ham envision a Ferdinand spreading the ball to Cole, who in turn tees up Franklin Lampard, when the Uniteds et al are at large?

Ajax were indeed visionists and prepared a team for tomorrow, immediate success brought ravenous predation. Tis argued by some, the constant cherry picking of talents from Amsterdam and the ensuing juxstaposition of team development, has stunted Ajax significantly. A young side arrived at a major cup final and in doing so, merely scribbled the names of their precocious talents on the menu, a la carte. What then for the clarity of vision and scouting networks? How far can one see beyond the beasts of empty bellies standing at the door? How clear is the vision when today has little bearing on tomorrow? Today it's Kluivert, tomorrow he's gone...where is the clarity? Kindly detail.

@Tx, casuistry at its cunningly evasive best. The question remains unanswered. How can one plan for the future when that future is preyed upon by the leviathans of the ocean deep? How can West Ham envision a Ferdinand spreading the ball to Cole, who in turn tees up Franklin Lampard, when the Uniteds et al are at large?

Ajax were indeed visionists and prepared a team for tomorrow, immediate success brought ravenous predation. Tis argued by some, the constant cherry picking of talents from Amsterdam and the ensuing juxstaposition of team development, has stunted Ajax significantly. A young side arrived at a major cup final and in doing so, merely scribbled the names of their precocious talents on the menu, a la carte. What then for the clarity of vision and scouting networks? How far can one see beyond the beasts of empty bellies standing at the door? How clear is the vision when today has little bearing on tomorrow? Today it's Kluivert, tomorrow he's gone...where is the clarity? Kindly detail.

Again, I present to you Sevilla FC

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

^And how close are Sevilla to transforming the vision to domestic success? How close are they to winning La Liga?

The ever shifting goal posts of the intellect!

They do not have to have won la liga to be classified as successful. They have won the Europa 2-3 times...the copa, I think...been in CL...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

And why haven't they challenged the status quo? Because they can't for as, when the vision blinks, Alves, Ramos, Reyes and alike are off to dine with the broad bellies. No shifting of goalposts, rather a revealing of an argument as skewhiff as the tower of Pisa. You started by stating the success of Madrid was laid on youthful foundations yet seem reluctant to accept that others cannot lay said foundations because the seeds are picked long before the farmer's harvest.

And why haven't they challenged the status quo? Because they can't for as, when the vision blinks, Alves, Ramos, Reyes and alike are off to dine with the broad bellies. No shifting of goalposts, rather a revealing of an argument as skewhiff as the tower of Pisa. You started by stating the success of Madrid was laid on youthful foundations yet seem reluctant to accept that others cannot lay said foundations because the seeds are picked long before the farmer's harvest.

I'm not talking about the Madrids or the Barcas...I'm talking about the 2nd and 3rd tier teams who can have success with vision and clarity of ideas. The standard for success for a Sevilla cannot be the same for Madrid.

And they can challenge and have challenged. Dortmund was dominating a few years back. Liepzig just came 2nd in their first season in the Bundesliga. Roma finished 2nd...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

^Unfortunately there are those who win a league with lesser players and others who squander better. The game needed a cap on transfer fees and wages a long time ago, it never came, now, madness reigns. Sadly, the antithesis was a fantastic failure, Bendtner, Szczesznyzzz, Denilson, Djorou etc, these guys were supposed to be our Ajax by now. Walcott, Ramsey, Wilshere, Gibbs, Oxlade, Frimpong, sadly when the school's are failing, there's little choice but to find the end product in the market place. Crazy can be avoided, but mad is inevitable.

This was where the conversation was supposed to go before, "why haven't they challenged...?"

You don't necessarily have to have the budget of a Madrid to challenge, if you have the vision and clarity of ideas. You will not always win, but you will remain in the hunt. And every often, you will catch one of the mega teams cold.

Atleti has done it. Dortmund did until Munich retooled and they started selling too soon, and to a direct rival. Leipzig to an extent, but ran out of steam...

Point is, it can be done; and has been done...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

Roque Mesa from Las Palmas to Swansea. May turn out the smartest signing of the year...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

Haven't seen much of Lionel Mesa, but if he can repeat his produce at Las Palmas amongst the blood and thunder of the great gladiatorial gauntlet that is...the Premier of Premier leagues, it will be a coup.

Predictably, he was ridiculed by those who seek to hold him accountable for their limitations.

But lets try again and see if the influence of paleskin might do the trick....

Quote:

Here’s a semi-interesting football stat, at a time when semi-interesting football stats are in short supply. If Manchester United were to win an unlikely Premier League and Champions League double next season they would, all things being equal, become the tallest team ever to win either competition.

A roughed out United first XI has them at an average height of close to 6ft 2in. Chelsea’s most recent English champions were just over 6ft. Leicester were relative titches at 5ft 11in. Only two Champions League-winning teams have struggled up to 6ft a head, Chelsea’s lofty outliers in 2012 and Jupp Heynckes’ hulking Bayern Munich a year later. There is no particular reason to suggest Mourinho’s United are about to join these teams. But if they do it will be a triumph of uniquely burly, gnarled, gangling proportions.

Perhaps this isn’t surprising. It’s no secret José Mourinho loves a big man. In managerial middle-age it seems an increasingly chronic obsession, Mourinho surrounding himself with gristle and muscle in the way a decrepit Pharaonic emperor king might surround himself with camels, asses, embroidered rugs, handsome thick-necked slave boys. Right now Mourinho is just a signing or two away from being able to field an entire first team in which every player is over 6ft tall, surely a first in any major league. Give him the tools. He will build a wall.

But then, these are odd times generally. Halfway through the fat hot stupid summer of money, each day of the current transfer window brings with it another chapter of interminable, half-glimpsed relocations, a place where things continue to happen, to semi-happen and to unhappen without ever really seeming to happen at all.

It is a period of dreamy, half-formed flux, of shouted names and wild possibilities. At times just reading the morning sports pages is like waking up from a strange dream about Ryan Bertrand in which you’re waking up from a strange dream about Ryan Bertrand only to wake up and find you’re still waking up from a dream about Ryan Bertrand, until at last you stagger to the bathroom, splash your face with cold water and look up at the mirror to find … you’re Ryan Bertrand.

For Mourinho the window has at least been brutally to the point. To date he’s signed one very big man. He might still sign some others. Most intriguingly Eric Dier has again been linked with a move to Old Trafford, something that still seems unlikely from the outside, but which from a neutral perspective might just make some sense for all concerned.

Spurs won’t want to sell. But £50m is a lot of money for a player who isn’t always first choice. Plus it might be good for Dier, who has clearly learned a huge amount from Mauricio Pochettino, showing himself to be that rare thing, a powerful, imposing English footballer whose chief gifts are intelligence and tactical discipline, an ability simply to occupy a position, rumbling about the place like a Panzer tank on a leisurely mopping-up expedition.

It is quite a limiting role though, a question of following, repeatedly, a set of minutely grooved positional instructions. At the same time just imagine what nasty, sly, spoiling, winning habits a player of his unfussy intelligence could pick up from Mourinho, who hoards and covets defensive midfielders; who sees the hulking – Dier is 6ft 2in – defensive midfielder as the building block of all sporting life, the football equivalent of carbon; who gave Casemiro his Real Madrid debut; who took Thiago Motta from Genoa and made him a Champions League winner; and who transformed Mikel John Obi from attacking tyro to the world’s most improbably long-serving defensive wardrobe.

Most of all Dier to United would obviously be good for Mourinho, another peg in that increasingly rugged-looking second-season team. This has tended to be the José way. His great Chelsea Mk1 team were notably tough. Inter’s Champions League winners were a gnarled, high-energy bunch. Even the second Chelsea team, the Rat Pack team of Fàbregas-Hazard-Costa, were the tallest in the league on the opening weekend of their title-winning season.

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that Mourinho really is out on his own on this one. Look back and the general trend is fairly static. Elite-level players aren’t getting noticeably taller. The first Premier League-winning team had an average height of 5ft 11in, pretty much the same as the last three. The last four Champions League winners have all been less than 6ft man for man.

It is only really Mourinho out there trying to block out the sky, a manager who these days basically only signs tall people. To date his major first-team buys at United have been Romelu Lukaku (6ft 3in) Zlatan Ibrahimovic (6ft 5in), Paul Pogba (6ft 3in), Victor Lindelof (6ft 2in) and Henrikh Mkhitaryan (5ft 11in). He doesn’t seem to trust Mkhitaryan much. Probably coincidence.

What he hopes to gain from this isn’t immediately obvious. Tallness doesn’t always equal toughness. The first great Alex Ferguson team of 1993-94 were relatively small but still a thrillingly unforgiving bunch, all wild eyes, tiny shorts and huge crunching ankles. It is more a tactical thing with Mourinho. Quite lot of the game-plan these days seems to be about reducing the play to a series of static moves, winning individual challenges, disrupting an opponent’s supply lines. Height and power, the ability to affect “rapid aerial transitions”, to dominate set pieces – all of these clearly help.

This is just talk for now. Dier probably won’t leave Spurs. Mourinho might build his annihilating title march around the hobbit-like craft of Juan Mata, a footballer who even in the dying minutes of some frantic Premier League epic looks as though he’s about to sit down on a toadstool, tap his pipe on his shoe and start telling you a story. Like so many noises off in the dead days of mid-summer the dream of the all 6ft-plus XI is still just a tantalising prospect.

It might not be the worst thing, though. For all the talk of verve United have often been a hard-running, tough-tackling team. This is part of the appeal, a history of ball-players but also of physical strength, from the dreamy promise of Duncan Edwards, to the horrible specimens of the mid-1980s, to Eric Cantona’s flair and muscle.

The question of what Manchester United are supposed to look like, how those red shapes should move, should look to win, has been constantly debated over the last few years. The yearning for more muscle and more power might look like a managerial tic, the opposite of dreamy, flee-flowing flair. But it isn’t so far away from the old winning swagger.

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

Most exciting Serie A in a decade starts. Juve look dominant vs Calgiari.

Napoli looks sumptuous. What a sweet counter... 0-2 vs Verona

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

Very impressive from Kayode's team...2 headed goals from Stuani and intelligent passing game...

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp

_________________Form is temporary; Class is Permanent! Liverpool, European Champions 2005.

We watched this very boring video, 500 times, of Sacchi doing defensive drills, using sticks and without the ball, with Maldini, Baresi and Albertini. We used to think before then that if the other players are better, you have to lose. After that we learned anything is possible – you can beat better teams by using tactics." Jurgen Klopp